Joel C. Rosenberg - The Ezekiel Option (Political Thrillers Series #3)

The Ezekiel Option

By Joel C. Rosenberg

Dear Reader,

One morning over a decade ago I walked into my office as I'd done a thousand times before. But that morning something was in my office that every publisher dreams about but few publishers get to experience, some-thing that literally changed the future of our company and shook the very foundations of the publishing industry. What caught my eye as I threw my coat across the chair was not the proposal resting in my in-boxI see those every day. No, what grabbed my attention immediately was the title of the proposal: Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days.

What a great title, I thought to myself. But can the content deliver? I jumped on that proposal and pushed every button at our publishing house to get the deal done and the book to market. The rest is history and still making historya series of novels that has sold an astonishing 62 million copies and will sell millions more. The last seven books all have been #1 best-sellers on the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and Wall Street journal lists.

Why do I write this here? Because I want you to know, dear reader, that recently I had a very similar experiencea real deja vu. Not many months ago my fiction director, Becky Nesbitt, sent me a proposal for a new novel by an author named Joel Rosenberg. I walked into my office one morning and there it wassomething every publisher dreams about but few get to experience, something I now believe can once again shake up the publishing industry. This time it wasn't the title that caught my eye, nor was it Becky's note that told me to lock the door until I'd finished reading the proposal; it was the manuscript's first two sentences, which read:

Boris Stuchenko would be dead in less than nineteen minutes. And he had no idea why.

What a great opening, I thought to myself. But can the rest of the book deliver?

Deliver it did! I sat down with that manuscript, and was instantly propelled into a ride I'll never forget. Becky and I jumped on that proposal and pushed every button at our publishing house to get the deal done and the book to market. Now it's your turn. Fasten your seat belt because this is not just a page-turner, it's a page-churner. You'll chum through the pages with the same heart-stopping intensity of viewing a great thriller movie for the first time. When you get to the end, you'll be a different person than you were at the beginning.

I have the same gut feeling about this novel as I did about Left Behind. That novel is a thrill ride bringing to life the prophecies of the book of Revelation. The book you hold in your hand is the same kind of thrill ride, but bringing to life the biblical prophecies leading up to the events of Revelation. So turn the page, and enjoy the ride of your life.

RON BEERS

This book is dedicated to the Rosenberg family,

who escaped czarist persecution of the Jews in Russia

in the early years of the twentieth century;

and to my parents, Len and Mary Rosenberg,

who taught me by their love and example

the true meaning of faith and freedom.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

""

James Mac MacPherson

THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

William Harvard Oaks

THE PRINCIPALS

. Marsha Kirkpatrick, National Security Advisor

. Jack Mitchell, Director of Central Intelligence

. Burt Trainor, Secretary of Defense

. Nick Warner, Secretary of State

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS

. Jon Bennett, Senior Advisor to the President

. Bob Corsetti, White House Chief of Staff

. Ken Costello, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs

. Erin McCoy, Senior Advisor to the President, on loan from the CIA

. Indira Rajiv, Director of the NAMESTAN Desk, CIA

. Chuck Murray, White House Press Secretary

ISRAELI LEADERS

. David Doron, Prime Minister of Israel

. Dr. Eliezer Mordechai, Former head of Mossad

RUSSIAN LEADERS

. Grigoriy Vadim, President of the Russian Federation

. Aleksandr Golitsyn, Russian Foreign Minister

. Andrei Zyuganov, Director of Presidential Administration (Chief of Staff)

. Sergei Ilyushkin, Deputy Speaker of the Duma; Protege of Vladimir Zhirinovsky

AI-NAKBAH LEADERS

. Yuri Gogolov, Russian Cofounder of Al-Nakbah Terrorist Movement

. Mohammed Jibril, Iranian Cofounder of Al-Nakbah OTHERS

. Mustafa Al-Hassani, President of Iraq

. Ruth Bennett, Mother of Jon Bennett

. Salvador Lucente, European Union Foreign Minister

. Ibrahim Sa'id, Palestinian Prime Minister

. Ifshahan Kharrazi, President of Iran

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The journey that follows is fiction.

The prophecy upon which it is based is true.

The cryptic vision of a Hebrew scribewriting twenty-five centuries agoforetold one of the most horrific periods in the future of mankind.

Yet even today it remains one of man's great unsolved mysteries.

Its central premise was once discussed in a speech before the U.S. Congress, and was believed to be both true and increasingly close at hand by one of America's greatest presidents.

Its central characters surface throughout history, in the Tanakh and the book of Revelation, in the journals of Marco Polo and the writings of Voltaire, in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the histories of Josephus, in the works of Russian authors like Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol, and in the writings of Nobel Prize winners like Elie Wiesel and Isaac Bashevis Singer.

How soon will this prophecy come to pass? Some believe that even now there are signs that the board is being set, that the great game is about to begin. Some believe that among those signs are the fall of Saddam Hussein and the death of Yasser Arafat.

Winston Churchill once cal ed Russia "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." It is unlikely that he understood the full magnitude of what he was saying. But it is here that our story begins. JOEL C. ROSENBERG

Moscow, Russia September 2004

The most important failure was one of imagination.

We do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat.

THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT:

Final Report of the National Commission

on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all convictions, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

W.B. YEATS

The Second Coming

TUESDAY, JULY 29 3:16 P.M. 52 MILES SOUTHEAST OF MANHATTAN

Boris Stuchenko would be dead in less than nineteen minutes.

And he had no idea why.

The fifty-three-year-old self-made bil ionaire had a long list of enemies; of this he had no doubt. Business competitors. Political rivals. Mistresses too numerous to count.

But this made no sense. Was it really a hit? Was he really the target? Or was the president and CEO of LukoilRussia's largest oil companysimply in the wrong place at the wrong time for the first time in his life?

Stuchenko gripped the leather armrests. He couldn't see the terrorists. At least one was behind him, back in business or economy class. But he didn't dare turn and look.

He wasn't even supposed to be on this flight. As the richest man in Russia, he never flew commercial. His fleet of private jets, including a gleaming new Gulfstream V, was the envy of the Russian oligarchs.

But over the past eighteen months, he'd become obsessed with buying Aeroflot, Russia's aging airlineher jets, her routes, her infrastructureand turning the much-ridiculed "Aero-flop" into a world-class competitor. To seal the deal with the Wall Street crowd, his strategists were positioning him as a man of the people, willing to fly one of the most troubled airlines on the planet before turning her into a profit-making superpower.